Iowa State University

Geographic Information Systems

Support and Research Facility

Geospatial Data

Public Data Access

The GIS Facility provides
data produced by the DNR and data developed by research on campus.
This public data can be accessed directly from on campus by those
people with an ISU username or from off campus, via ftp, by anyone.
To connect to the data on campus you have to map a path to the data location.
Create a connection in My Computer (not a browser) to:

\\my.files.iastate.edu\GIS$\gis\Data\Pub

and be sure to specify your ISU username if you have not logged in
to your machine with that name. If you connect from off campus, you will need to use the ftp method, explained below.

Restricted Data Access - ESRI Tutorials and Streetmap

The GIS Facility provides
data produced by ESRI that is included with our site license.
Only those people with an ISU username will be able to access the
data. To connect to the data you have to map a drive to the location.
Create a connection in My Computer (not a browser) to:

\\my.files.iastate.edu\GIS$\gis\Data\ESRI

and be sure to specify your ISU username if you have not logged in
to your machine with that name.

If you are doing this from off campus,
you will first need to connect to the ISU network with the VPN
secure connection; if you do not do that first, the network mapping
will not work.
To find out about the VPN - http://www.it.iastate.edu/howtos/vpn

FTP Access

The GIS Facility FTP server provides access to a variety of geospatial
data. We have many of the commonly used datasets
developed by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, links to NRCS soil
data as well as data developed by research on campus. Feel free
to browse the site directly or use the Geospatial
Data Explorer to get descriptions of available data.

Use an FTP client like Filezilla.

ftp.gis.iastate.edu

iastate\gisftp for the user

isugisftp! for the password

To use a web browser, the syntax is: ftp://iastate\gisftp@ftp.gis.iastate.edu

Geospatial data explorer

The GIS Facility maintains the Iowa State University Geospatial
Data Explorer. This website provides several methods for
data searches. The Geospatial Data Explorer houses metadata documents
for geospatial data housed on the ISU FTP Server, references
to other potential sources of data on campus, and selected references
to popular data clearinghouses.

Do you have data you would like to share? As a service to students
and researchers on campus the GIS Facility has the ability to store
your geospatial data upon completion of a project. We can help
you develop metadata for your data and make it searchable through
the Geospatial Data Explorer

Iowa Geographic Image Map Server

The Iowa Geographic Image
Map Server (aka The Ortho Server) provides a wide variety of image
products via download or through web map services (WMS). Data coverage
includes the entire state of Iowa. Products include